The next time a member of a regional water agency wants to secede, a majority of voters across the entire wider district will have to approve the change under a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Late last week the governor signed Assembly Bill 399, legislation authored by Encinitas Democrat Tasha Boerner and originally designed to thwart an effort by water officials in Fallbrook and Bonsall from divorcing from the San Diego County Water Authority.
Newsom signed the bill without issuing any public comment.
AB 399 was introduced as a way to slow or prevent the Fallbrook Public Utilities District and the Rainbow Municipal Water District from departing the county water authority.
But the legislation was amended as it made its way through the statehouse to take effect at the start of 2024 rather than as an urgency bill. The distinction meant that the issue would be settled by voters in Fallbrook and Rainbow later this fall.
The Nov. 7 ballot measure is the product of several years of jockeying on the part of the smaller North County water agencies, which complain that rates charged by the county water authority are too high.
If approved by voters in the two small rural districts, the Fallbrook and Rainbow districts would leave the San Diego County Water Authority and join the Eastern Municipal Water District based in Riverside County.
According to the San Diego County Water Authority, all of the voters within a regional water agency should get a say on whether whether two small districts can leave the larger group — not just customers of the agencies that want to secede.
County water officials say ratepayers across the region have paid to upgrade facilities, and if Fallbrook and Rainbow leave, they would be wrongly sticking the remaining districts with undue costs.
With AB 399 now going into effect in January, future divorces will have to be approved by voters across the entire agency boundaries.
Voters within the districts leaving the regional agency also must approve a separation in their own separate ballot initiative, although the two measures could be held concurrently.
Earlier this year, the San Diego County Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel that approves and rejects boundary changes for local public agencies like the water authority, agreed to allow the two North County agencies to leave.
The decision came on a split vote, with rural and suburban commission members agreeing to the change while more urban representatives voted no.
According to the San Diego County Water Authority, the so-called detachment would wrongly force remaining member agencies to pay some $140 million in added costs that should rightly be paid by Fallbrook and Rainbow customers.
Water authority officials have challenged the matter in San Diego Superior Court.
The case has been assigned to Judge Kenneth J. Medel. A hearing in the dispute is scheduled for January.
